A Foreign Country

8

‘I simply don’t understand it. I don’t understand why he doesn’t want me to be involved.’

Bill Knight was slumped over the wheel of the Mercedes, staring down at his beige patent leather shoes, shaking his head as he tried to fathom this latest, and probably final, SIS insult to his operational abilities. A passer-by, gazing through the window, might have assumed that he was weeping.

‘Darling, he does want you to be involved. He just wants you to be on the outside. He needs you to keep an eye on the door.’

‘At two o’clock in the morning? Who comes back to a hotel at two o’clock in the morning? He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t think I’m up to it. He’s been told that you’re the star. It was ever thus.’

Barbara Knight had mopped and soothed her husband’s fragile ego for almost forty years, through myriad professional humiliations, incessant financial crises, even his own hapless infidelities. She squeezed his clenched fingers as they gripped the handbrake and tried to resolve this latest crisis as best she could.

‘Plenty of people come back to a hotel at two o’clock in the morning, Bill. You’re just too old to remember.’ That was a mistake, reminding him of his age. She tried a different approach. ‘Kell needs to gain control of the reservations system. If somebody comes through the door and sees him behind the desk, they might smell a rat.’

‘Oh balls,’ said Knight. ‘It isn’t possible to get into any half-decent hotel in the world at that hour without first ringing a bell and having someone come down to let you in. Kell is fobbing me off. I’ll be wasting my time out here.’

Right on cue, two guests appeared at the entrance to the Hotel Gillespie, rang the doorbell and waited as the night porter made his way to the bottom of the stairs. It was as though they had been provided by a mischievous god to illustrate Knight’s point. The porter assessed their credentials and allowed them to pass into the lobby. Bill and Barbara Knight, parked fifty metres away, saw the whole thing through the windscreen of their superannuated Mercedes.

‘See?’ he said, with weary triumph.

Barbara was momentarily lost for words.

‘Nevertheless,’ she managed, ‘it’s best if they don’t ring the bell. Why don’t you buy yourself a packet of cigarettes and just loiter outside or something? You could still be very useful, darling.’

Knight felt that he was being hoodwinked. ‘I don’t smoke,’ he said, and Barbara summoned the last of her strength in the face of his petulance.

‘Look, it’s perfectly clear that there’s no role for you in the hotel. Kell wants me to play Miss Marple and make a nuisance of myself. If we go in as husband and wife, I’m automatically less vulnerable. Do you see?’

Knight ignored the question. Barbara finally lost her patience.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you simply went home.’

‘Went home?’ Knight reared up from the wheel and Barbara saw that his eyes were stung with resentment; oddly, it was the same wretched expression that he wore after almost every conversation with their errant thirty-six-year-old son. ‘I’m not going to leave you alone in a hotel with a man we don’t know, working all hours of the night on some crackpot scheme to …’

‘Darling, he’s hardly someone we don’t know …’

‘I don’t like the look of him. I don’t like his manner.’

‘Well, I’m sure the feeling is mutual.’

That was a second mistake. Knight inhaled violently through his nose and turned to stare out of the window. Moments later, he had switched on the engine and was beckoning Barbara to leave, purely by force of his body language.

‘Don’t be cross,’ she said, one hand on the door, the other still on the handbrake. She was desperate to get into the hotel and to check into her room, to fulfil the task that had been given to her. Her husband’s constant neediness was pointless and counter-productive. ‘You know it isn’t personal.’ An overweight man wearing a tracksuit and bright white trainers walked past the Gillespie, turned left along Rue Alberti and disappeared. ‘I’ll be perfectly all right. I’ll call you in less than an hour. Just wait in a café if you’re worried. Tom will probably send me home in a couple of hours.’

‘What café? I’m sixty-two years old, for goodness’ sake. I can’t go and sit in a café.’ Knight continued to stare out of the window. He looked like a jilted lover. ‘In any case, don’t be so ridiculous. I can’t abandon my post. He wants me watching the fucking entrance.’

It began to rain. Barbara shook her head and reached for the door. She didn’t like to hear her husband swearing. On the back seat of the Mercedes was a sausage bag in which the Knights usually ferried bottles and cans to a recycling area in Menton. She had stuffed it with a scrunched-up copy of Nice-Matin, an old hat and a pair of Wellington boots. She picked it up. ‘Just remember that we’ve had a lot of fun in the last few days,’ she said. ‘And that we’re being very well paid.’ Her words appeared to have no visible impact. ‘I’ll ring you as soon as I get to my room, Bill.’ A gentle kiss on the cheek. ‘Promise.’

9

Kell drained the last of the Johnnie Walker and picked up the landline on the bedside table. He dialled ‘0’ for Reception. The night porter answered on the second ring.

‘Oui, bonsoir, Monsieur Uniacke.’

It was now just a question of spinning the story. The wi-fi in his room wasn’t connecting, Kell said. Could Reception check the system? The porter apologized for the inconvenience, dictated a new network key over the phone, and hoped that Monsieur Uniacke would have better luck second time around.

He didn’t. Ten minutes later, Kell picked up the laptop and took a lift down to the ground floor. The lobby was deserted. The two guests who had been drinking cognacs in the bar had gone to bed, their table wiped clean. The lights had been dimmed and there was no sign of the barmaid.

Kell walked towards the reception desk. He had been standing there for several seconds before the night porter, lost in his textbook in the back office, looked up, jerked out of his seat and apologized for ignoring him.

‘Pas de problème,’ Kell replied. It was always advisable to speak to the French in their mother tongue; you earned their confidence and respect that much more quickly. He flipped open the laptop, pointed to the screen and explained that he was still having difficulty connecting. ‘Is there anybody in the hotel who might be able to help?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir. I’m here alone until five o’clock. But you may find that the signal is stronger in the lobby. I can suggest that you take a seat in the bar and try to connect from there.’

Kell looked across at the darkened lounge. The porter seemed to read his mind.

‘It will be easy to turn up the lights. Perhaps you would also like to take something from the bar?’

‘That would be very kind.’

Moments later, the porter had opened a low connecting door into the lobby and disappeared behind the bar. Kell picked up the laptop, quickly moved the bowl of potpourri on the counter six inches to the left, and followed him.

‘What are you reading?’ he called out, selecting a table with a partial view of the lobby. The porter was flicking a panel of lights beside a sign saying FIRE EXIT. Kell had still not been able to find any evidence of CCTV.

‘It’s for my college,’ he replied, raising his voice to be heard. ‘I’m taking a course in quantum theory.’

It was a subject about which Kell knew very little: a few half-remembered book reviews; the odd chat on Start the Week. Nevertheless, he was able to hold a brief conversation about black holes and Stephen Hawking while the porter fetched him a glass of mineral water. He introduced himself as ‘Pierre’. Within a few minutes, the two men had developed that particular rapport which is characteristic of strangers who find themselves alone at night while the world around them sleeps. Kell could sense that Pierre perceived him as easygoing and without threat. It probably suited him to have a guest to talk to; it made the time pass more quickly.

‘Looks like I’ve got a signal,’ he announced.

Pierre, tucking in a loose section of shirt, smiled in relief. Kell navigated to a moribund SIS email account and began to read the messages. ‘I’ll be out of your way as soon as possible.’

‘Take your time, Monsieur Uniacke, take your time. There’s no hurry. If you need anything more, just let me know.’

Moments later, the bell rang at the entrance to the hotel. Pierre walked across the lobby, skipped down the stairs and briefly disappeared from view. Kell could hear a woman talking in flustered and apologetic English about the ‘blasted weather’ and how sorry she was for ‘disturbing the hotel so late at night’.

Barbara.

‘This way, madame.’

Pierre shouldered the sausage bag and led her up into the lobby with practised charm, passing behind the reception desk in order to process her details.

She checked in like a pro.

‘Oh the flight was terrible. I’m not sure that the captain quite knew what he was doing. One moment we were in the air, the next he was bumping us down on the tarmac like a tractor. Do excuse me for not speaking French. I lived in the Loire as a young woman and used to be able to get by quite well, but at my age these things seem to disappear from one’s brain, don’t you find?’

‘Is it just yourself staying with us, madame?’

‘Just myself, yes. My husband, poor lamb, died three years ago.’ Kell almost spat out his Badoit. ‘Cancer got him in the end. You’re so kind to have found me a room at such short notice. I am a nuisance, aren’t I? There were several people at the airport with no idea at all where they were going to stay. I ought to have shared a taxi with them, but it was all so confusing. I must say this hotel seems awfully nice. My passport? Of course. And I suspect a credit card is required as well? They always are these days. So many PIN numbers. How is one supposed to remember them all?’